Chapter one

 
 

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CHAPTER SEVEN 
Doppelganger 
After that Saturday my life returned to what it had 
been, in one way. I went back to work on Monday and I was 
my old self, and things went well. I didn't have the dreams at 
night any more. And I didn't visit Felka utca and the bar 
every night either, although I still went in once or twice a 
week. 
But there were also big changes. The next Wednesday 
Andrea came home from a visit to the doctor's with big 
news: she was expecting a baby! We were extremely happy. 
We had often talked about starting a family, but hadn't 
thought it would happen quite so soon. And then the day 
after that she lost her biggest teaching job - fifteen hours a 
week with an international bank. They didn't want to pay for 
Hungarian lessons for the people who worked there 
anymore. The ups and downs of life! 
A week or so later I told Zsolt - the wine cellar barman 
- that Andrea had lost her most important job. He said he was 
looking for someone to help him in the bar. He said it wasn't 
a job for an 'intelligent lady' like my wife, but he also said he 
could offer her good money, and he felt the place needed a 
woman's touch to make it better. 
I talked about the offer with Andrea, and in the end she 
took the job. The pay wasn't as good as for teaching, but the 
bar was very close to home. 

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Also, she didn't have to spend hours working on her 
lessons like she did for teaching. And she soon made quite a 
difference to the bar. When I went in the week after she'd 
started it looked much better - there were flowers on the bar, 
and pictures on the walls. 
'I've asked Zsolt if we can make one side of the bar into 
a sitting area with tables and chairs,' Andrea told me over 
dinner one evening, 'and he's agreed.' 
'Why do you want to do that?' I asked. 
'Well, I thought more people might want to come in,' 
she said. 'And women might like it, too.' 
And she was right. Soon after that women started going 
to the bar as well as men. Zsolt was very pleased. 
However, between all these new things in our life, I 
didn't forget my strange meeting with 'myself'. I started 
doing lots of reading about life after death. 
It was a completely new thing for me, and I found it 
very interesting. I learnt many things I didn't know. Perhaps 
the most interesting thing I found out was that what had 
happened to me has a name: 
DOPPELGANGER: A German word which is used in 
English. It means something like 'double-walker' or 
'doublegoer' - a ghostly double of a living person, who comes 
to give messages about danger or to offer advice. It can only 
be seen by its owner (This was why there were no footprints, 
and why Zsolt had seen nothing in the bar, I thought.) 

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However, it can sometimes be seen by somebody close 
if it has an important message. It is usually thought to bring 
bad luck, and is often believed to show that there will soon 
be a serious problem or a death. 
I showed Andrea the page from the book I was reading. 
'And so is this what you think you saw?' she asked 
looking surprised. 
'Well, it sounds like it, doesn't it?' I answered. 
So now I knew - I had met my doppelganger. The next 
question was why?